Hi,
How I love the thermostat in my house, protecting me from the sometimes blistering cold outside (was -27C some days ago), keeping a comfortable temperature stable. When away, when I need less heat or when I need a bit more to get rid of a chill, I can turn it down or up and it’ll soon produce the desired effect, thanks to the connected furnace. This seems to be about the same as with Earth’s climate, except it seems that its thermostat, connected to the sun and modulated by CO2 and other greenhouse gases, is being tinkered with. This thermostat running our planet is off balance and running too wild for many inhabitants, and coming times look bleaker. Our assault on Earth’s thermostat is from our past, current and ever increasing use of fossil fuels and their subsequent carbon emissions into our atmosphere, which ultimately also seriously affect Ocean and all life within it and on the surrounding land. Luckily for we humans, Ocean absorbs about 25% of these emission each year, lessening the effect on the atmosphere but increasing its acidly, with subsequent negative implications, especially if you are a shellfish.
This thermostat, increasingly out of whack, has been destroying much in New Zealand these last days, just as one example. Where their affected areas should be in a dry spell, as per history, they’ve just been inundated with rain like never seen before, and hopefully never again, but how likely is that? They are now looking to take it all more seriously, even though such seriousness is not new to them, but rather an ongoing adjustment to already updated plans and to be an example to the world. The five million that live there can’t believe what is happening to their paradise. But their Climate Change minister, James Shaw, does: “I don’t think I’ve ever felt as sad or as angry about the lost decades that we spent bickering and arguing about whether climate change was real or not (he said on Feb. 14). It is clearly here now, and if we do not act it will get worse.”
Global mean atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration has now well passed 400 ppm, to a level that last occurred about 3 million years ago, when global average temperature and sea level were significantly higher than today. It just continues to increase as we set the thermostat higher and higher. We are heading towards an atmospheric concentration not experienced in tens of millions of years. The present-day emissions rate of 37 billion metric tons per year suggests that there is no climate analog for this century any time in at least the last 50 million years.
While we all may think we’re awake to what’s going on, our vigilance and energy often gets a bit dissipated, put to the side or forgotten until such a horrendous disaster strikes. We must be smarter, more proactive, promote our knowledge and not put up with nonsense; like oil executives being appointed to the managing body of COP28 upcoming later this year in the United Arab Emirates. Nothing less will serve us and future generations.
Wishing you a good read in today’s Planetary Health Weekly (#7 of 2023).
Best, david
David Zakus, Editor and Publisher
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IN COMPLETE SOLIDARITY WITH UKRAINE SEEKING PEACE AND VICTORY |
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Professor A. Pavlovsky (1857-1944) was the first in Russia to produce antidiphtheric seerum in Kiev Bacteriologic Institute in 1895. (Artist: G. Nechiporenko) In: "The Way Artists See It" (1994) by A. Grando, founder and director of the Central Museum of Medicine of Ukraine in Kyiv. Pg 97. ISBN
5-7707-6698-0
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AND WITH THE BRAVE PROTESTERS IN IRAN |
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TABLE OF CONTENTS - FEB. 16, 2023 |
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CLIMATE AND BIODIVERSITY CRISES UPDATES
GLOBAL HEALTH NEWS
COVID-19 UPDATES
BEZ'S BLOG #14 "Canada - United States Comparisons"
SPOTLIGHT ON HUMAN RIGHTS
SPOTLIGHT ON INDIGENOUS WELLNESS
SPOTLIGHT ON POLICY
SPOTLIGHT ON MEDIA
SPOTLIGHT ON EDUCATION
FEBRUARY READING
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
by Saskatchewan Public Health Official on Diabetes in Indigenous Communities
FYI #1
FYI #2
FYI #3
UPCOMING EVENTS
ENDSHOTS of "SUNSET WALK ALONG GEORGIAN BAY"
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CLIMATE & BIODIVERSITY CRISES UPDATES |
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UN Chief Unleashes On Fossil Fuel Giants: 'Your Core Product Is Our Core Problem' |
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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres speaks at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on February 6, 2023. Credit: United Nations
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres made clear that securing a livable planet depends on stopping the "bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers."
In a speech to the General Assembly, Guterres called for an end to "the merciless, relentless, senseless war on nature" that "is putting our world at immediate risk of hurtling past the 1.5°C temperature increase limit and now still moving towards a deadly 2.8°C."
2023 must be "a year of reckoning," the U.N. chief said as he outlined his priorities for the months ahead. "It must be a year of game-changing climate action. We need disruption to end the destruction. No more baby steps. No more excuses. No more greenwashing."
Scientists have warned repeatedly that scaling up the extraction and burning of coal, oil, and gas is incompatible with averting the most catastrophic consequences of the climate emergency. Nevertheless, hundreds of corporations—bolstered by trillions of dollars in annual public subsidies—are still planning to ramp up planet-heating pollution in the years ahead, prioritizing profits over the lives of those who will be harmed by the ensuing chaos.
"I have a special message for fossil fuel producers and their enablers scrambling to expand production and raking in monster profits: If you cannot set a credible course for net-zero, with 2025 and 2030 targets covering all your operations, you should not be in business," said Guterres. "Your core product is our core problem."
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Big Return To Coal In Europe Killed Off By Record Renewable Energy |
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Solar and wind power generate a fifth of the EU's energy in 2022. Credit: AP
For the first time ever, wind and solar generated more electricity in the European Union than any other source - preventing a feared return to coal as the continent battled an energy crisis.
As Russia cut off gas supplies to Europe last year, countries including the UK, Germany and Italy put more coal power on standby to fill the gaps, raising feared of increased greenhouse gas emissions from the most polluting fossil fuel.
But the bloc fended off a feared dramatic increase in burning coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, which is globally being phased down in a bid to curb climate change. Instead, wind and solar generated a record fifth (22%) of electricity in the EU in 2022, overtaking gas for the first time (20%).
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Fight Climate Change Without Slowing Growth: UAE's COP28 Chief |
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Credit: Copernicus C3S/ECMWF
Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE' special envoy for climate change and CEO of oil giant ADNOC, said the energy transition needed to make the planet "wealthier and healthier".
"We need to hold back the global rise in temperatures to 1.5 degrees (Celsius), without slowing economic growth," he told a graduation ceremony at the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence.
"We need to drive an inclusive energy transition that leaves no one behind, especially in the Global South. We need to make our planet wealthier and healthier at the same time."
Al Jaber's appointment as president of COP28 has been criticised by activists who said it threatens the "legitimacy" of the global forum against climate change.
The minister of industry and advanced technology is a veteran of COP meetings and heads a leading renewable energy company. His appointment was welcomed by US climate envoy John Kerry.
On Monday, France's economy minister urged delegates to get behind Al Jaber and focus on "concrete decisions".
"Don't misunderstand the challenge of COP28," Bruno Le Maire said in Abu Dhabi.
"The challenge of COP28 is not to know who is in charge of the COP. The key challenge of the COP28 are the results, the concrete decisions."
The French minister, who also visited Qatar as part of his trip to the Gulf, said he had been reassured by Al Jaber and members of the UAE government regarding their approach to the climate conference.
"I think all the participants to the COP28 should ... try to support the efforts of the presidency of COP28 so that at the end of COP28 the single winner will be our planet."
The last UN climate talks, in Egypt in November, ended with a landmark deal to create a "loss and damage" fund to cover the costs that developing countries face from climate-linked natural disasters and impacts like rising sea levels.
But observers were left disappointed that little progress was made on reducing planet-heating emissions from fossil fuels.
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What Is Greenhushing? The Greenwashing Tactics To Look Out For In 2023 |
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Credit: Canva
What is greenhushing and how do HSBC use it to their advantage?
Greenhushing is when organisations deliberately choose to under-report or hide their green or ESG credentials from public view to evade scrutiny.
Greenhushing firms may hide under the guise of being ‘quietly conscientious’ - fighting the good fight without shouting about it. Yet by remaining vague, they may be giving the impression they are greener than they actually are.
Blackrock and HSBC have been accused of this in recent months. The asset management firms downgraded a number of Article 9 funds - exclusively invested in sustainable assets - to an Article 8 category: funds that promote environmental or social factors but do not need to target a sustainable outcome.
HSBC said this was to comply with stricter EU regulatory standards and that it would not change the objectives or policies of the funds. But Planet Tracker says it was potentially taken to avoid investor scrutiny.
There are reasons why genuinely eco-minded companies may choose to under-report their sustainability credentials, however. These include a fear of being asked for ever increasing amounts of data, which puts pressure on resources for smaller companies. Some companies may also be deterred by the regulatory costs for affirming green credentials.
Other times, companies may wish to test their green credentials over a longer period before announcing their impact. This can shield them from scrutiny, including greenwashing accusations or regulatory fines.
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MORE CLIMATE CRISIS RELATED NEWS |
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Car Fumes Can ‘Impair’ Brain Function In Just Two Hours. Here’s How To Protect Yourself |
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Credit: Getty Images
Traffic pollution can impair human brain function in just a couple of hours, a new study suggests.
It is the first time that an experiment has found evidence of altered brain network connectivity in humans due to air pollution.
"For many decades, scientists thought the brain may be protected from the harmful effects of air pollution," said senior study author Dr Chris Carlsten, head of respiratory medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada.
“This study, which is the first of its kind in the world, provides fresh evidence supporting a connection between air pollution and cognition."
The researchers briefly exposed 25 healthy adults to diesel exhaust and filtered air at different times in a laboratory setting at Vancouver General Hospital.
Brain activity was measured before and after each exposure using ‘functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging’ (fMRI). This technique measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow; when a particular part of the brain is being used, blood flow to that area increases.
The researchers watched for changes in the brain's ‘Default Mode Network’ (DMN), a set of interconnected brain regions that play an important role in memory and internal thought.
The fMRI revealed that participants had decreased functional connectivity in widespread regions of the DMN after exposure to common levels of diesel exhaust, compared to filtered air.
"We know that altered functional connectivity in the DMN has been associated with reduced cognitive performance and symptoms of depression, so it's concerning to see traffic pollution interrupting these same networks," said Dr Jodie Gawryluk, a psychology professor at the University of Victoria.
"While more research is needed to fully understand the functional impacts of these changes, it's possible that they may impair people's thinking or ability to work."
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Whooping Cough Outbreak Declared In Parts Of Southern Alberta: Pertussis outbreak spans several communities with low childhood immunization rates |
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Credit: CDC
Alberta Health Services has declared an outbreak of pertussis — commonly called whooping cough — in parts of southern Alberta.
Pertussis is a bacterial infection that can cause severe coughing that can last for weeks. It's most dangerous to infants, who are at risk of serious complications, including pneumonia, convulsions, brain damage and death.
The outbreak spans the County of Lethbridge, Coaldale, Taber, Vauxhall, Grassy Lake and Bow Island — all communities that have significantly low childhood immunization rates, AHS said.
The health authority says that by age two, children should have received four doses of the pertussis vaccine — but in some of these areas, only a third of two-year-old kids have had the shots.
Sixteen cases of pertussis have been identified in the South Zone. Of these, three patients needed to be hospitalized, AHS said.
"Pertussis immunization is safe and effective against preventing severe illness," AHS said.
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SARS-CoV-2 & COVID-19 UPDATES |
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The pandemic continues, still affecting many in many countries, but to a lower extent now. However, it is diminishing and becoming more of a background event than a main one. information about Covid-19's presence in our communities and outcomes is hard to find, and many erroneously feel it's over. In Canada, it is still infecting many and killing about 34/day (down slightly since last week) with a total now over 50,000, and there's high numbers of those hospitalized in non-ICU. Collective action, data reporting and leadership have all but disappeared. The highest rates of Covid-19 related deaths are in: Monaco, Iceland, Taiwan, Finland, Ireland and Sweden (from .73 to .23/100,000 population, respectively).
Over the last week, reported cases are down by more than half to ~200,000/day; deaths down about 33% to ~1400/day; and vaccinations are way up to at about 3 million/day.
Vaccination, despite ongoing concerns about waning immunity and much misinformation, along with other proven public health measures, remain the best ways to keep yourself and others safe from serious consequences.
See below for more global stats and current hotspots:
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Note fewer high risk areas, a continuing good sign. |
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New Variant on the Rise - XBB.1.9.1 |
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"It is the plague in seemingly all sincerity." Bob Woodward |
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After 3 Years Of Covid, CNN Went Into Rural China For Lunar New Year. Here’s What We Found And How Officials Tried Stopping Us |
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Government minders follow CNN into a village clinic. Credit: CNN
China’s CDC says the Covid peak across the country has passed since the government abandoned its zero-Covid policy.
It says that 80% of the population, or more than 1.1 billion people, have already been infected. Health authorities claim that visits to clinics for fever and Covid hospitalizations have declined since their peaks in late December and early January.
Experts say China’s population had almost no underlying natural immunity before reopening, while existing Chinese vaccines offer limited protection against infection from Omicron, so one massive wave ended up sweeping over the whole country – hitting rural and urban areas almost simultaneously.
What makes China different is that Covid “can spread like wildfire without any impediment”, said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The speed and scale of the spread challenged conventional wisdom. Almost at the same time Covid was wreaking havoc in urban areas, we saw the rapid increase of infections in many parts of rural China.”
But Huang adds that the government has not released accurate data on the scale and toll of the outbreak. The Chinese government says more than 72,500 people with Covid died in hospitals between December 8 and January 19, but the World Health Organization has suggested these numbers “under-represent the true impact of the disease.”
In rural areas, experts say there’s likely far more silent suffering. More people likely died at home because they couldn’t afford, or were unable, to get to the hospital.
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ADDITIONAL COVID-19 RELATED NEWS |
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Canada - United States Comparisons |
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In his book, “American Exceptionalism”, Seymour Martin Lipsett wrote that "it is impossible to understand a country without seeing how it varies from others. Those who know only one country know no country."
We ended the last blog pointing out the importance of political choices a society makes that strongly influence its health using as examples U.S. states and whether they have liberal or conservative politics. What are the outcomes of political choices in Canada?
We find that incomes in the bottom half of Canadian households are higher than in the U.S. While richer US households have more income than Canadians, median Canadian income is higher than in the U.S. Canadians are generally better off than Americans; and as pointed out, healthier. Canadians have a life expectancy that is 5.5 years greater than the U.S. for 2021. That is equivalent to eradicating heart disease and cancer as causes of death in the U.S. If that happened they would be about as healthy as Canadians.
We have stressed the importance of income inequality as a determinant of a population's health. The relationship is seen among U.S. states. More unequal states have higher mortality. If we take a measure of health as age-adjusted mortality rates, and look at the relationship with the proportion of income received by the less well-off 50% of households for U.S. states in 1990, there is a strong relationship that is highly statistically significant. (See Figure 1 below.)
If we throw the ten Canadian provinces into this graph the relationship looks like (as illustrated above).
Here the circle diameters are proportional to population size. Notice that the ten Canadian provinces in red cluster at the low mortality, low income inequality spectrum. The green slope remains very statistically significant for the U.S. states. With only ten data points, the less steep slope for the Canadian provinces is not statistically significant at the p<0.05 level. That means there might be a one in 20 chance of this occurring randomly. There are only four U.S. states that cluster with the ten Canadian provinces. It would appear that the income inequality health relationship is weaker in Canada. Why might that be?
The United States functions on the cafeteria plan. If you want something you have to buy it. Not much is given to those who aren't already rich. The bottom 90% have to struggle to pay for schooling, housing, transportation, healthcare, and much much else. In Canada schooling is heavily subsidized. There are few private universities. Medical care is free at the point of delivery by physicians and in hospitals. There remains a monthly Canada Child Benefit payment which may be supplemented by provinces. Thus Canadian income can go for non-essential items such as vacations. There are statutory vacation laws in Canada while the United States remains a no-vacation nation. Much more redistribution in the way of social expenditures happens in Canada compared to America.
There is also a strong relationship between income inequality and homicide rates. Similar to the above demonstration if we look at homicide rates among Canadian provinces and U.S. states we find higher American income inequality resulting in more homicides. Martin Daly at McMaster University (in Hamilton, Ontario) has done many such studies summarized in his 2016 book “Killing the Competition: Economic Inequality and Homicide”. (See Figure 2 below.)
Mass shootings are almost a daily occurrence in the United States these days. Studies show they are more likely to occur in areas with high income inequality and the presence of high incomes. One mechanism might be the stress from living in such an environment that makes some people take it out on others. From 1998 to 2019 there were over 800 mass shooting fatalities in the U.S. but less than 15 in Canada. Violent political rhetoric fans these shootings in the U.S. Something is seriously wrong there. Canadian media is not as divisive. Fox News stopped broadcasting in Canada because of low viewership.
Another way to see this comes from a study showing the income inequality health relationship is robust for American labour market income, but inconsistent for Canadian cities.
Another study found income inequality associated with higher mortality among native-born Canadians but not immigrants. The longer immigrants stay in Canada the more they are affected by income inequality. Canada has many immigrants. Twenty percent of those living in Canada were born outside of the country. Tolerance for the foreign-born is quite high in Canada in comparison to the United States.
Happiness and well-being measures are higher in Canada than America despite the U.S. Declaration giving everyone the right to pursue happiness. Happiness is declining in the U.S. in comparison to Canada.
There is less obesity and less pain in Canada compared to the United States. Canada scores much better in the UNICEF Innocenti Reports of child welfare in rich nations. Canada has apologized to the First Nations. I’m doubtful it will happen in the U.S.
This is not meant to paint Canada as a utopia. Health inequities remain. Poorer people have poorer health. Mortality outcomes for Nunavut are worse than in any U.S. state. Much needs to be done in both nations.
Stephen Bezruchka, Seattle, WA
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SPOTLIGHT ON HUMAN RIGHTS |
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Lula Accuses Bolsonaro Of Genocide Against Yanomami In Amazon |
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Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, visiting a Yanomami health venue in a rural area of Boa Vista, Roraima, on 21 January this year. Credit: Ricardo Stuckert/Brazilian Presidency/AFP/Getty Images
Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has accused Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right administration of committing genocide against the Yanomami people of the Amazon, amid public outrage over a humanitarian catastrophe in the country’s largest Indigenous territory.
Lula recently visited the Amazon state of Roraima to denounce the plight of the Yanomami, whose supposedly protected lands have been plunged into crisis by government neglect and the explosion of illegal mining.
“More than a humanitarian crisis, what I saw in Roraima was a genocide. A premeditated crime against the Yanomami, committed by a government impervious to the suffering of the Brazilian people,” Lula tweeted on Sunday, one day after visiting an overcrowded clinic for Yanomami patients in Roraima’s capital, Boa Vista.
Lula’s justice minister, Flávio Dino, said he would order a federal police investigation into “strong indications” the Yanomami had suffered crimes including genocide – meaning the deliberate attempt to partially or completely destroy an ethnic, national, racial or religious group.
Horrifying photographs of emaciated Yanomami children and adults emerged on the eve of Lula’s trip, laying bare the scale of the health crisis facing the territory’s estimated 30,000 Indigenous inhabitants.
“The photos really shook me because it’s impossible to understand how a country like Brazil neglects our Indigenous citizens to such an extent,” the leftist president told reporters in Boa Vista.
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SPOTLIGHT ON INDIGENOUS WELLNESS |
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Indigenous-Led Solutions Counter A Diabetes Epidemic |
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Credit: Mongabay
When I first walked into Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre cafeteria some 20 years ago, I was shocked to see many patients with lower-leg amputations. My medical colleagues told me this “epidemic of lower-limb loss” was mostly related to diabetes, primarily among Indigenous people.
The epidemic persists.
About one in 10 Canadians are diabetic and the trends are on the upswing. In addition to losing limbs, people with diabetes are at increased risk of heart, kidney and eye disease. Diabetes, primarily Type 2, used to be rare in Indigenous adults but is now three to five times more common than in the general population. Type 2 diabetes generally develops in adulthood and accounts for about 90 per cent of all diabetes cases. Type 1 diabetes generally develops in childhood and is the result of the body’s immune system attacking insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.
The main reasons for the diabetes epidemic in Indigenous people are thought to be a combination of forced adoption of European diets and lifestyles, and a genetic predilection for the disease. Historic restrictions on traditional hunting and gathering, forced removal of children from their communities during the Sixties Scoop to residential schools where they were fed western diets, and the price of food in northern communities are among the reasons for the rise of diabetes among Indigenous populations.
Scientific debate continues about biological versus environmental risk factors for diabetes. The “thrifty gene effect,” developed in the 1960s, is a prevailing theory that suggests that genetic protective mechanisms developed by Indigenous people during periods of fasting during traditional hunting and gathering activities actually predispose individuals to diabetes when a western diet is introduced.
In line with Health Canada’s Framework for Diabetes in Canada, the federal government has pledged $35 million toward diabetes education, monitoring, data collection and research. The framework report acknowledges the negative impacts of colonial practices and ongoing systemic racism, noting that Indigenous people are not only at increased risk of being diabetic but also have more severe outcomes and face additional barriers to accessing care.
Indigenous groups have put forward community-specific solutions to address some of the key contributors to diabetes – diet and lifestyle.
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Sustainable Central Banking: Clear Green Water Between The U.S. Fed And The European Central Bank |
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AgnosticPreachersKid/Wikimedia; © European Union 2017 - European Central Bank (via Flickr)
One of the big sustainable finance priorities for 2023 is how central banks will grapple with deepening climate and nature risks alongside high inflation and rising interest rates. One thing is clear: all major central banks recognise that the climate crisis and nature loss pose material threats for the financial system, requiring them to act to understand and address these challenges. Where they diverge depends very much on the mandates they are given by legislators, the interpretations they make and the political environment in which they operate. These differences were clearly on display in January in interventions from US and European central bankers.
The United States Fed chair Jay Powell stressed that the Fed will not become a “climate policymaker”. But few believe that the Fed should take that role, rightly leaving climate policymaking to national and state-level government agencies, not least in the US where President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is creating green market ripples across the world. What people can expect is that the Fed takes tough-minded action within its mandate, bearing down on sustainability risks as they manifest in implications for price and financial stability. Here, Powell recognised that the Fed does have a responsibility to deal with the climate imperative in banking supervision, and the Fed will be conducting a pilot climate scenario exercise with six major US banks this year. The confirmation last week that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will publish its rules on climate-related disclosures in April is a welcome step forward in the US market and one that the Fed should look to build on.
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The Psychological Drivers Of Misinformation Belief And Its Resistance To Correction |
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From: The psychological drivers of misinformation belief and its resistance to correction
Misinformation has been identified as a major contributor to various contentious contemporary events ranging from elections and referenda to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only can belief in misinformation lead to poor judgements and decision-making, it also exerts a lingering influence on people’s reasoning after it has been corrected — an effect known as the continued influence effect. In this Review, we describe the cognitive, social and affective factors that lead people to form or endorse misinformed views, and the psychological barriers to knowledge revision after misinformation has been corrected, including theories of continued influence. We discuss the effectiveness of both pre-emptive (‘prebunking’) and reactive (‘debunking’) interventions to reduce the effects of misinformation, as well as implications for information consumers and practitioners in various areas including journalism, public health, policymaking and education.
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Ecovillage Design Course |
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Credit: EcoVillage
Are you ready to begin designing thriving communities and societies that live within our planetary boundaries?
Join our global online classroom and learn from renowned educators from around the world.
Learn more about our expert facilitators here.
The next live online course will run from March 4th to July 23rd, 2023
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FEBRUARY READING - NEW BOOK |
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Handbook of Life Course Health Development (free book from 2018) Editors: Neal Halfon, Christopher B. Forrest, Richard M. Lerner, Elaine M. Faustman |
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Credit: Book Cover
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.
This handbook synthesizes and analyzes the growing knowledge base on life course health development (LCHD) from the prenatal period through emerging adulthood, with implications for clinical practice and public health. It presents LCHD as an innovative field with a sound theoretical framework for understanding wellness and disease from a lifespan perspective, replacing previous medical, biopsychosocial, and early genomic models of health. Interdisciplinary chapters discuss major health concerns (diabetes, obesity), important less-studied conditions (hearing, kidney health), and large-scale issues (nutrition, adversity) from a lifespan viewpoint. In addition, chapters address methodological approaches and challenges by analyzing existing measures, studies, and surveys. The book concludes with the editors’ research agenda that proposes priorities for future LCHD research and its application to health care practice and health policy.
Topics featured in the Handbook include:
- The prenatal period and its effect on child obesity and metabolic outcomes.
- Pregnancy complications and their effect on women’s cardiovascular health.
- A multi-level approach for obesity prevention in children.
- Application of the LCHD framework to autism spectrum disorder.
- Socioeconomic disadvantage and its influence on health development across the lifespan.
- The importance of nutrition to optimal health development across the lifespan.
The Handbook of Life Course Health Development is a must-have resource for researchers, clinicians/professionals, and graduate students in developmental psychology/science; maternal and child health; social work; health economics; educational policy and politics; and medical law as well as many interrelated subdisciplines in psychology, medicine, public health, mental health, education, social welfare, economics, sociology, and law.
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Says Saskatchewan public health official James Irvine of the Northern Saskatchewan Population Health Unit when asked about interventions to combat the diabetes epidemic in Alberta's Indigenous communities.
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Mapped: The World’s Major Earthquakes from 1956‒2022 |
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Credit: Visual Capitalist
Major earthquakes have occurred since time immemorial, but their observation and impact have not been evenly distributed around the globe.
On February 6, two earthquakes struck in Türkiye near the Syrian border. Both registered above a 7 on the Richter scale and have a combined death toll rapidly rising past 20,000 people.
And looking at the history of recent and ancient earthquakes, the location of these is no surprise. Using data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), creator PythonMaps mapped earthquake epicenters between 1956 and 2022 that registered a 4.5 or higher on the Richter scale.
Looking at the map, it’s easy to spot the concentration of earthquakes along the boundaries of Earth’s tectonic plates.
These massive moving slabs of rock fit together almost like puzzle pieces, making up the lithosphere or the upper crust. But as the edges of tectonic plates collide, slide against, and move away from each other, the crust cracks and folds and causes earthquakes.
Most of the earthquakes visualized on this map follow the boundaries of the seven major tectonic plates, along with the Philippine Plate (south of Japan) and the Nazca Plate (west of South America).
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Opiods And The Elephant In The Room by Dr. Vincent Lam |
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Credit: MARY KIRKPATRICK
There is a parable in which a group of blind people encounter an elephant for the first time. They each touch it and share their impressions. One person, holding the trunk, declares that an elephant is like a snake. Another, who feels the ear, disagrees – saying an elephant is like a fan. Grasping the elephant’s leg, a third person says that elephants resemble trees.
Opioid addiction, a field in which I have worked for the past decade, could be said to be like this elephant. And I have been many of these blind people, having encountered opioids from different points of view during my career. After a decade working with people whose lives are affected by opioid-use disorder, I can begin to map the creature.
When I became a staff emergency physician in 2001, it was perfectly normal to prescribe Percocet tablets to someone with a twisted ankle, or a badly strained back. Somehow we believed that a magical divide existed between these “safe” opioids that doctors prescribed for the “right” reasons, and those that people used for the “wrong” reasons. We practised as if there was no link between the Percocet prescriptions we wrote for musculoskeletal injuries when working in the minor area of the emergency department, and the patients we revived from heroin overdoses in the resuscitation area of the same department.
In fact, the illicit market in opioid pills flourished with the increased supply from prescriptions we doctors were writing. A subset of people became addicted. Some progressed from pills to heroin, and later to fentanyl. Despite continuing research into other classes of medications, opioids are still the mainstay of treatment for opioid addiction at this time, and those that are used for this purpose are called opioid agonist therapies (OAT). In terms of saving lives, nothing else has proved nearly as useful. A 2021 meta-analysis, a type of study that combines results from multiple studies to give us a bird’s-eye view, examined 15 randomized controlled trials of methadone and buprenorphine, and found that the chance of dying from any cause was roughly halved during times when a person with an opioid addiction was receiving one of these treatments, as compared with times when they were not receiving them.
Thus, a key lesson about opioid addictions: At this time, the best medications we have for treating opioid addiction are opioids. If this observation were a part of the elephant, it might be the trunk – the part of the anatomy that comes to mind first. The irony of the treatments being so closely related to the compounds that underpin the problem is paralleled by people’s individual experiences: Many people initially use opioids to escape anxiety, pain and distress. Once addicted, people become further afflicted with anxiety, pain and distress in the absence of opioids. The solace that opioids provide transform into the stricture of their necessity. OAT medications don’t break this bond, but they stabilize it, making it possible to take daily medications – or, now, an option that is injected monthly under the skin.
What can be done?
Chronic outpatient addictions care needs to be accessible and patient-centred. OAT may have the strongest evidence, but until 2018, methadone was uniquely hamstrung by Health Canada, which required that physicians have special federal permission to prescribe it. This, along with uniquely legalistic regulation of OAT care in many provinces, which aligned with the interests of profit-focused outpatient clinics that benefit from high-frequency patient visits and urine sampling, often made this treatment onerous for patients and focused it entirely on pharmaceutical care. OAT needs to be broadly accessible in hospitals and outpatient settings, paired with funding and programs for case managers and counselling, with more flexible and patient-centred practices. Too often, people who use drugs also forgo crucial in-hospital care, because of stigmatizing experiences and a lack of OAT care in hospital. No one should be excluded from a vital surgery for the lack of OAT in that hospital.
We need multidisciplinary, publicly funded systems to rehabilitate painful conditions and return people to work, rather than leaving workers to sort it out on their own with opioid pills, and a setup for an addiction. Australia, a country that is historically and culturally similar to Canada, has integrated, publicly funded pain-management programs in every state. In 2021, Australia’s age-adjusted rate of all drug-induced deaths was 6.6 per 100,000. In the same year, Canada’s age-adjusted rate of total apparent opioid-toxicity deaths was more than triple the Australian figure for all drugs, at 21.2 per 100,000, a staggering difference.
Given the strong links between adverse childhood experiences and substance-use disorders, we need to support families – by providing universal paid parental leave, community supports for struggling parents, and accessible prekindergarten child care. We need to respect the deep value of family, and also the wounds that can grow within. We have to help families access useful tools, the resources to get through tough times, and workable responses to problems.
In addressing the trap of homelessness and isolation, we know how we could be doing better. The two-year “At Home/Chez Soi” study provided a highly supported housing program to traumatized, marginalized Canadians, many of whom were experiencing substance-use disorders and mental-health challenges. This cost-effective intervention had a range of positive outcomes, including improvements in quality of life and activities of daily living, and a reduction in emergency-department visits and criminal involvement. We need the political will to offer this to vulnerable Canadians.
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- April 14-16, 2023: CUGH Annual Global Health Conference - Global Health at a Crossroads: Equity, Climate Change and Microbial Threats and other side events (Washington, D.C. and virtual). In Conjunction With: The World Health Summit Regional Meeting 2023 & The AAHCI Global Innovation Forum 2023
- May 23-25, 2023: The Battery Show Europe (Stuggart, Germany)
- June 22-23, 2023: Positive Zero Transport Futures and Mobility Network will host the Emerging Mobility Scholars Conference at the University of Toronto. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows across Canadian institutions are invited to join in person at the University of Toronto to exchange ideas and showcase research relative to mobility and climate change. https://www.mobilitynetwork.ut...
- June 25-30, 2023: The third World Non-Communicable Diseases Congress (WNCD 2023) (Toronto, Canada).
- Women Plus Water 2023 Lecture Series
- October 12-22, 2023: Planet In Focus: International Environmental Film Festival (Toronto, Canada)
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SUNSET WALK ALONG GEORGAN BAY |
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UNESCO GEORGIAN BAY BIOSPHERE RESERVE |
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Stockey Centre for the Performing Arts (and Bobby Orr Museum) |
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Photo Credits: David Zakus |
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